Croatia (day 3), June 14 2016

Sveti Mihovil (1245m)

We woke up to a beautiful day in the small village Caklje near Podgora, and the village was still sleeping when we left early morning.

The island Hvar seen from our room in Caklje

The goal for this day had already been defined: Sveti Mihovil above Zavojane. I found information about this peak on summitpost.org. The peak is one of three peaks on the Vrgorsko gorje massif – in turn part of the Dinaric Alps System. The highest peak Sibenik (1314m) was out of reach due to rugged terrain and lack of information about any paths. So we chose to go for Sv. Mihovil – as I had the path on my GPS map.

The path to Sveti Mihovil

From Caklje, we drove up the mountain, eastbound, past the foothills of Biokovo National Park. At Kozica, we turned southeast and drove to Zavojane – passing under the motorway. We had a good view towards Sv. Mihovil along this way, and we hoped that the fog would soon lift. It did.

Sveti Mihovil – right

At Zavojane (signposted), we turned left and drove up to Podastine (not signposted). We parked in a curve before the buildings, in case someone lived there. However, we didn’t see any signs of any residents.

The path was marked with red and white circles and started by one of the buildings. After searching back and forth for a little while, we found it. It was hard to see at first, due to high grass. The path left us into a cleft, and from here the path switchbacked up the mountain side. It has been quite an effort by the locals to build this path – which we presume served the farm on the mountain plateau.

Looking down on the path from Podastine

Once we reached the top of the steep mountainside, we turned left and followed the ridge along the edge, in the direction of Sveti Mihovil. It was rocky and rugged terrain, but accustomed to terrain like this, we made good progress. We reached the top 1h:45m after leaving the trailhead.

On the ridge towards the summit

We had a nice stay at the top, and good view in all directions. Some fog lingered on the higher mountain tops, otherwise we would have had a perfect panorama view towards Biokovo and Sveti Jure.

Biokovo. Sveti Jure to the right

We followed the same route down. This terrain doesn’t exactly invite to off-trail escapades. It would have been nice to visit Sibenik, but if the potential danger of land mines and poison snakes isn’t enough to scare us off – this terrain certainly is…

Trip statistics: 7km, 740m vertical meters, 3h:10m.

We tried not to disturb these butterflies – in close embrace…

Our next destination was the town Knin – which would serve as base for our attempt to climb the highest peak in Croatia – Dinara.